@@purefoldnz3070 Watch the scene where Blair first arrives on the Lexington and the young officers excitedly crowd round him. Casper Van Dien is the one who shakes his hand and says it's an honour. :)
Wing Commander 5 Prophecy is The most Great game that is better in every way compared to WC 1-4 with pixel grafic WC 5 Was Superior game with high resolution grafics on 800 × 600 and 1024 ×768 monitors with a Vodoo grafic card installed there Was NO Pixels in WC 5 of any kind.
Yeah, this and WCIII were mainly meant to use keyboard/mouse for the story parts and joystick for the flight missions. the other WC games and X-Wing/Tie Fighter games were the same way, and I had a flight stick as a kid. It’s weird trying to play these games with modern controllers. I appreciate you going into the technical details of the game, and how some games are products of their times, which came make updating them for modern systems insane. This game was a real eye-opener for me about the aftermath of war. What happens after you beat the enemy? What happens when soldiers and pilots go home? Why would a man try to continue conflicts when everyone is tired of fighting? These were jaw-dropping for my 10-year old brain at the time.
I played WCIII & IV on playstation back in the day. IV came out around the same time as the original Dual Analog (predecessor to the Dual Shock). So I am talking original playstation controller. I found it was quite decent for something that was obviously designed with computer input devices in mind. But overall Colony Wars which was made specifically for playstation, was far far far superior in terms of gameplay (keep in mind I am talking about gameplay on the PSX). I wonder if my opinion would be similar to yours if I tried playing the games now. I actually have III and IV on EA's little wannabe Steam but never got them working. These days I have been proper spoiled by using HOTAS for years and years. Even on games like Ace Combat 7 I just couldn't deal with anything else (ffs editing that ini file, while nostalgic, was sooo annoying, but once I did, I never looked back).
The audio problems you're having are from the mismatch between Windows VOB audio decoding and the game engine. It can be fixed, likely you need to adjust your windows dvd codec settings.
The ending scene with Blair becoming a flight instructor isn't actually the only "good" ending. If you've chosen to side with Hawk more than Panther (basically made a lot of ends-justify-the-means moral choices), the flight instructor scene is replaced with a brief and morally ambiguous one where Blair has taken over Tolwyn's job with Hawk as his aid. Here, set to sombre music, we see a seemingly tired Blair order the deployment of forces (including the Black Lance's fighters!) to discourage a rebellion-in-progress on one of the Confederation's planets I always wondered whether we were supposed to assume Blair made some hardline choices as the new Admiral that precipitated this rebellion, or whether it was going to happen regardless of whether Blair became admiral or not. If the latter is true, the "happy flight instructor ending" is Blair simply letting someone else make the morally complex strategic decisions, while Blair enjoys his dream retirement job and trains cannon fodder for a new morally dubious conflict in blissful ignorance.
As a long-time fan of the Wing Commander series, including an installment called Privateer, I thoroughly enjoyed this review, Rowan. I played through WC4 back in the day, and thanks to you, I remember why it was so great.
Always thought Tom Wilson was absolutely awesome as Tod Marshall, also, the WC3&4 cutscenes made pretty descent movies in their own rights which is why I was so dismayed to find the WC movie to be such a total cluster-Eff, Chris Roberts had a winning concept, why did he go and change it into something unrecognizable?
There's a lot of reason to think studio meddling killed the Wing Commander movie. In particular, I saw an interview with Freddie Prinze Jr saying that the final shooting script was nothing like what he read when he signed up, and much worse. Also, apparently Roberts had so little time for post-production that the final edit was also the first edit.
Which literally makes no sense after what you say in the court room. It was such a weird ending. And it literally has to do with ONE mission, if you flashpack the Mega base or not.
@Drew Taylor The war against the Kats needs to either become a movie or a series (kind of like that cartoon, Wing Commander Academy) with decent effects. BUT if we start near the beginning of the adventures of Maverick, Maniac and Tolwyn, it probably will need different, younger actors.
JMS hated the character because it was forced on him by the network, so he took every opportunity to humiliate him before killing him off. I felt bad for the actor, really.
@@JnEricsonx I don't think he was a bad character and the actor did a great job. But yeah JMS just resented being told what to do. He did have his moments, and his death served the overall narrative at least.
Very nice retrospective, you did a fine job of covering the critical aspects both in terms of gameplay and presentation. I definitely agree that WCIV was a major step up in overall story and presentation quality from Heart of the Tiger. Back in the day I was a huge fan of the WC series, as well as the amazing Privateer! Cheers!
Great review! This was easily my favorite of the Wing Commander series. Played it multiple times to see all the narrative outcomes. I remember actually seeing a trailer for this game in theaters. As a gamer in the mid-90's, it was an unexpected surprise. Really miss single player narrative flight sims like this game.
This is great nostalgia. I just started playing Rebel Galaxy Outlaw for some Wing Commander/Privateer vibes. Its too bad they don't make games like this anymore.
@@DMSProduktions Its really great, got it for $20 on the PS4. It even has a radio station. You can follow the story or take on various jobs, deliveries, bounties etc
Actually, the ending wasn’t so cut and dry. Many of your decisions impacted how the ending transpires. One of the options has Blair replacing Tolwyn, and in command of the Black a lance.
Really? Did this require certain things done in game as well up until that point? I only saw either Tolwyn hanging himself or Blair being shot by a firing squad.
Man, when I was a child, I have played this game almost every weekend. It is not a lie, when I say I have completed it about 100 times😂 It was like an awesome SciFi movie❤️
Wow. That might be some record... ;) I was already 19 at the time it came out, I remember completing it twice. Primarily to see where other choices would take me. But I remember that I had two completely different experiences: First time, I loved the "movie" so much, I couldn't completely appreciate the flying (I have played and LOVED WCI, though, before, many times).... 2nd time around it was the opposite, I began to REALLY enjoy the space combat, and viewed the clips as rather unwelcomed pausing in between... I can't remember, can you skip the movie parts? (except the decision parts, of course)
I had a difficult time getting into WC IV. After three whole games over four years forming an epic fighting the Kilrathi, it was hard for me to care about the threat pirating caused. Maybe I should give it another shot.
I loved the game back then. The space dog fights were cool but the story was what really pulled me in. Still Mark Hamil's best performance as an actor outside of voice acting :D
You have to use a codec pack like k-lite to be able to mess with codec options and raise the audio volume, it's not really the fault of the game but of the type of compression used for the audio that windows tends to set to a low volume by default (I think it's the AC3 audio codec, but I can't swear on it). And yes: Wing Commander IV is all around great, at the time some decried as more movie than game bur frankly it felt like these people were more slamming indirectly Wing Commander III rather than actually reviewing IV. Apparently together with WC2 is also the game in which Roberts was the least involved on all levels.
Let me, someone of the iron age, criticize people at the beginning of the bronze age for making tools that didn't hold up as well. FFS, the thing *had* audio and live video. Just having it was absolutely stellar back then. It was like going from a Ford Model T to a Corvair.
I know this is an old video but you should see if you can check out Privateer 2 - it's in the same tradition of WC 3 and 4 but affords a lot more player agency. It's an often overlooked entry in the WC series.
The movie had its issue. Game wise, 3 and 4 had some interesting use of the live action filming. But for me, the first two games, along William R Forstchen's first two novels were always my favorite of this series. Still great games, and as Rowan says, great price and easy to get on GOG.
Yeah, they're great games too. I dig them. I just can't stand how poorly they run on modern computers once the battles get going. My biggest hinderance over the years has been constantly losing saves and having to restart after 1/3rd or 2/3rds through.
Played 3 in... 99 maybe? It was when I was walking out of Zilla US version. Got it in a pack at the Electronic Boutiques shop in the mall with System Shock and Bioforge. Tbh, it was probably my least favorite of the pack. Fun enough, but my first space shooter was Tie Fighter Collectors CD Rom, of which no Wing Commander game even comes close.
And I mean the Dos version of Tie Fighter. The one with Imuse. Imuse immersion was worth more than Wing Commanders entire fancy Hollywood style budget.
Now that Mass Effect and Homeworld have been remastered... this is probably my #1 series for a remaster. Right next to Freespace series. Just some modern compatibility, some quality of life updates and making it all one package would go a long way. WC 1 is damn near unplayable.
A real remaster would essentially have to be a complete remake of the game itself (new 3d engine, new models, recreated textures, new backgrounds) and a remaster of the cutscenes based on the original 35mm film. It's never going to happen, but it would be so sweet if it did.
Gosh, I loved this game to death. Also, I didn't defect at first (cause it WAS no more than a hunch at that point, and it didn't make sense to me yet), which added some nice touches when reuniting with Maniac et al. Had quite a few amazing moments, however cheap and cheesy they might seem today (which... they really do ;) ). Kinda felt like the Babylon 5 of video games at the time, partly because of the story. Anyways, good memories. Great re-view. And if you feel like going further down that road: I-War (Independence War) is an amazing space operetta as well.
You get some great scenes with Paulson and Seether if you stay on the Lexington. And flying with Seether as your wingman is a hoot: "Damage? You must be joking."
Yes, I-War 1 was great. Good looking 8-Bit graphics. Massive Battles. Moral decisions. Powerful Ship. An effort to simulate space and physics and feeling of going places (not quite the solar system, but close). But alas, a lot of bugs and kind of unfinished development.
IIRC (and keeping in mind I played the Playstation version of the game), the key thing there was whether you used the flashbomb on the first opportunity to destroy the station, or saved it for later and used it on the supercarrier.
The secondary pilots who never appear on-screen are production members. I briefly chatted with George Oldziey, the composer of the music in games 3 and 4, back in the late 90s and he said that his filming session for the communication screens was basically going in a closet with one wall made to look like the aft cockpit bulkhead of one of the series' fighters and read the lines.
WC series in general was awesome, as it was about characters in space opera. Currently we do not really have anything similar.. Would really love new character story based space opera game, even if it would be made with similar graphics as Wing Commander 2. Also the game design decision to clearly divide game to parts of conversations and flight is awesome and more games should try to rekindle the idea.
Man I played the hell out of this game as a teenager. It felt like a much more nuanced and grown up game than Wing Commander 3 did, despite the prior game's tone, because ultimately the Kilrathi represent a near monstrous alien enemy bent on humanities destruction.. Once you realise that it's humans killing humans in job lots, it somehow feels more personal because this is us, killing us. I would love for some form of HD remaster for the WC trilogy, but sadly no one is making Space Flight combat simulators these days.
Honestly, there are so many American media stories that portray "hidden fascists" of some kind. It's like this is a major anxiety that exists in the USA, at least in certain circles. The events in January kinda prove them right.
J6 certainly exposed political corruption in American elite class a year later, especially FBI's involvement in the set up, it has been fascinating to learn about it.
Interestingly enough, the novelization has Blair completely missing out on the first chance to defect. It also paints Tolwyn's descent into madness as the end result of all the trauma he endured in the previous books. While it's not sympathetic to his methods, Blair can at least get why he goes full space fascist.
I do not recall how many endings WC4 had, but it's worth noting, it had multiple endings! I believe 3 if I recall correctly, but I'm trying to remember back 24 years? Good/Dark Endings? Update... Apparently there are 4 Endings that I have found!!! A "Good", a "Dark", a "You suck at debating and have been found a traitor", and "You didn't do well on the missions, you suck".
It is weird seeing the cut scenes look so good! The CD release "upped" the quality of the video from 256 colours to 64k (16-bit), but because of storage restrictions, I found the video quality was worse than Wing Commander III. I know they later came out with the DVD-ROM version, and the GOG version uses the DVD video files, but while I own the GOG version, I've never actually played it. Oddly enough, I did play the game once after getting it on GOG, but I played it from the CDs I had as there were problems starting the GOG version at that time.
Great video, but I'm surprised you didn't mention the Dark Side Ending to PoF (which you get by winning the debate against Tolwyn but agreed with Hawk too many times instead of Panther and using the Flash-Pak on the Ella Superbase, with Blair taking Tolwyn's place, keeping the Black Lance around and using any means necessary to stabilize the Confederation). This IMO really needed to be told: It's the main telling difference that PoF's narrative had from HotT and even Prophecy, in which all those dialogue options and moral choices you have Blair make throughout the game actually does affect the ending, instead of just changing his love interest around like in HotT.
On the one hand, I think your review is quite fair, but on the other you maybe can't quite grasp why we became such fans of WC back then. PCs were changing so fast that - unless your parents were rich - you always lagged behind. To make this game run on your PC was a challenge. And to have Luke Skywalker/ Mark Hamill in a computer game was mad. I suppose the best way to explain it is around the "immersiveness" item you use. Ppl nowadays are used to it. For us, it was more about "responsiveness" of the fighters in game (which was by no stretch of the imagination a given) and to actually have live!!! tv-scenes in a computer game.
Man this bring back memories. I loved this game. I bought it around in 1997 I believe when I had just upgraded my computer to a Cyrix 686-133 or something. I even have the original box laying around and I it came on 7 Cd-roms. I think there as even a rare? DVD version that required an separate mpeg card to even better quality FMV. This was around the time FMV (with real actors) become a selling point and a lot of games featured it. Nothing came close to Wing Commander IV tho. I also agree this was a better game then WC3.
For the longest time I used Wing Commander IV as my goto example for cinematic storytelling in gaming. At a time 2 years before Metal Gear: Solid, a year or so before FFVII even (which I hear lots of people talk about as if it was the start of "good" storytelling in video games... not that I agree with that story being all that good but anyways), there was little like it and nothing with the level of quality it had. Even if the quality at the time was comparable to DTV titles, it was still head and shoulders above other FMV in games and I still like it. My big point was how much effort was put into both telling and more importantly, showing the story unfolding. Even after games like MGS, this was still the title I referred to in this context. Back then all the people I knew played games that, even when telling a good story, did not really show it. At best you would get exposition explaining the details. I remember a lot of people thinking that I was dead wrong in telling them that a cinematic style to the storytelling in games would be huge. Mainly the opposition was in terms of technical aspects. People just didn't think game systems would be able to do what I was predicting or that people simply wouldn't be able to merge the cinematic style with games either that often or that well. addendum: In terms of gameplay, I preferred Colony Wars. Contemporary of WCIV, came out a year later. And if you can't tell, I had WCIV on Playstation. addendum 2: I played WCIII after WCIV and tbh, my opinion is similar to what was said in this video, I appreciated what it was but didn't truly enjoy it. For me this was because of how polished IV was in comparison to III. III was simply outclassed.
I think your evaluation of these games is wrongly positioned time-wise. I had a Pentium 286 PC at the time that I think couldn't even cope with WC III (not until I got a 486), but it was a complete novelty that the Kilrathi fiends spoke British English. I remember that in itself being an exhilarating experience. I enjoyed those games very much and did not like what came after, i.e. Privateer. But space exploration and only a bit of fighting seems to be the norm nowadays. When it is presented like in Mass Effect I don't mind that much. And we all know what happened or is happening to Star Citizen. If that is supposed to be man's future we surely need to get back into Space at some point in time.
That game was simply awesome! The cast was so great, not one weak actor or actress! This would have been a great SciFi show, I am sure! Gameplay was solid, I played this game like over 12 years after release, still serviceable thx to the great actors. A shame that this franchise is dead. Btw WC shows what a great actor Mark H. is! Okay there are some shows that show this too but for me he will always be the Wing Commander, not Luke!
This game sold you a choice. Join the border lands and defect or stay with the confederatation, but you never had a real choice. You had to defect in order to progress. That's understandable but they shouldn't have sold it on the box as giving players a choice. There is no choice.
One of my favorite games ever. So many story twists. If you don't defect but keep playing for a while it gets really awkward. Really well done the whole feeling of "what the hell is going on?"
Personally I really disliked the nazi rehash storyline in WCIV. I really with they'd remake WCIII, and I couldn't understand why the Wing Commander movie didn't just make a movie out of WCIII (with a very compressed storyline).
oh, you got the flight instructor ending? heh... yeah... about that... you don't know the power of the dark side... then. Try redoing that mission and see where else Blair goes.. to what other dark.. places... that some might consider unnatural.
It always amazes me the great actors they got for all of these games. Also it wasn't until way after playing the Wing Commander games that I found out Ginger Lynn was a pron star. Definitely hope you review Wing Commander: Privateer 2 The Darkening starring Clive Owen. Wing Commander 5 :Prophecy brings back cockpit mode but you don't play Blair this time. A space sim game that was great but sadly not available digitially was Freelancer.
I don't understand all the hate against the Dragon fighters in WC4. I loved them as a kid playing this amazing game multiple times. That fighter type made me feel like I was battling against the space equivalent of a ninja 😆
As much as I enjoyed Wing Commander III and IV, the Privateer games are more fun in my opinion and allowed you to venture on your own. The later Privateer game that also had quite the cast was fun but didn't feel as big as 1.1 and 1.2. It's a shame almost no other studio making space simulators saw the value of the immersion sitting in a cockpit and having iconic characters contact you in ways you'd remember, instead focused solely on combat and action in either a full screen view or 3rd person view (seeing the ship) which in my opinion was the biggest reason the genre faded away. With playing Privateer my room was dark, my keyboard elevated in an angle to the screen, and my Wingman Extreme joystick in front of me. I felt like the ace the game portrayed you to be, good times..
If the twist sounds out there, also keep in mind that by WC2 the Terran Confederation had been at war for 40 years. IIRC there's no big time skip in WC3 so it's roughly about that number. They've been on an emergency footing wiith tons of power and budget given over to the military and the executive and now they want to go back to a very decentralized confederation. It's no surprise there's a radical movement to prevent that from happening.
There's only one thing I've played it with every time I've played it... I honestly don't think Admiral Tolwyn hung up like a criminal who is afraid to face his final sentence. Honestly, I see it more likely that Tolwyn denied any longer having the tape over his eyes or the hood over his head when he was to be shot.
I remember getting this on the 3DO (remember that classic from Panasonic) my memory of that is better looking and better sound than the earlier PC version.
prior to it's release I went out and spent far too much on a 15" Trinitron monitor to play the game and picked up a DX2 50 to drop into my system.. best money spent .. ever.
I really don't see a reason why this couldn't be remastered for modern machines. The 35mm film can easily be upscaled and there are many game engines that this game would sit in quite well.
Yeah, I liked the series and the books that went with them. Can you imagine having a Star Wars sequel series with Luke at that age -- with Hamill still in his prime?
I don't know if its was this one, but I read a Mark Hamil interview where he said that if he got into conflict with his son, afterwards he'd hear the game load up into his 'fate' scene in his sons room.....
